


Milk & Honey

by racketghost



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, But he won't admit it, Crowley is a Sweetheart (Good Omens), Established Relationship, Garden Make Out Sessions, Is it roleplaying if you are roleplaying yourself?, M/M, Oral Sex, Retired and Soft, Rimming, Soft Husbands being Soft, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), The Inherent Romanticism of Breakfast, Wall Sex, they love each other so much y'all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:13:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24426331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/racketghost/pseuds/racketghost
Summary: Why rein in that rather fantastic imagination he had been cursed with when the option to play out their first time— they are in a garden, Crowley reminds himself— is presenting itself so lovingly?Like a ripe fruit, he thinks. It would be a sin not to pick it.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 95
Kudos: 618
Collections: Break in Case of Emergency: Fluff and Love, To The World - Good Omens Anniversary Exchange





	Milk & Honey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leaveanote](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leaveanote/gifts).



> for one of the most darling and wonderful humans ever, [leaveanote](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leaveanote/pseuds/leaveanote) who asked for some super soft, romantic, retiree lovemaking in the South Downs (which is a tall order, as leaveanote is an absolute champion of the romantic soft genre).
> 
> thank you for giving me such a beautiful prompt, i hope I did it a shred of justice <3
> 
> I also owe a big thank you to [Anti_kate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_kate/pseuds/Anti_kate) for the superb beta/formatting/cheerleading assistance (thank you for fixing my terrible tense issues especially), you are a lifesaver <3

If someone had asked Crowley what life would look like post-Armageddon he would have given some approximation of the events of the Book of Revelation: the boiling sea, the cracked earth, the poison rain. He would have said demons running amuck on earth, angels in celestial cages, no humanity to speak of. The reality of such a thing had been embedded in his bones perhaps from the moment of his demonic conception, etched into a place he could not erase, could not take off.

He had expected such an outcome even despite his persistent optimism, cemented into him maybe by the worrying events pre-Armageddon: Aziraphale gone, bookshop destroyed, nothing to do but get smashingly drunk in a pub and mire in regret for not kissing the angel the moment he had first seen him, up on that eastern wall, nervous and pink. 

He had not, however, expected a life quite like this one. 

One with white-chalk cliffs and the seaside kissing into them, a shoreline of crushed up rock. One with winding gravel pathways and only a handful of paved roads, cottages sunk back into the green. One with Saturdays spent seaside and a farmer’s market on Sundays— a religious service Crowley finds he can finally get behind. 

One, most importantly, with a cottage made mostly of stone and reclaimed timbers from an old sailing ship. A vegetable garden in the back and flowers in the front. A progressing plot of recently tilled earth. A bed inside big enough for two with twin indents side-by-side. Books on every flat surface and plants crowding the windows. Angel-winged teacups in the kitchen and Aziraphale’s clothing hanging in the closet, right next to his. 

It has been two-hundred and twenty-seven days and he still cannot quite believe it. Two-hundred and twenty-seven days and he wakes up each morning still feeling for Aziraphale next to him, expecting the worst each time, the angel gone or _not his_ and there is always a moment of profound relief to find him sitting up in bed, drinking tea, reading books, _still his_. 

And even on days like this one— where they stay home all day and work only when convenient, pulling weeds by hand and coaxing flowers to bloom— Crowley can’t help but swallow down that feeling that everything is a dream. That he will wake up and find the boiling sea, the cracked earth, the poison rain, no angel, _not his_. 

“Looks a bit like rain,” Aziraphale is saying from the center of their garden, green things all around him. He is gazing dreamily up at the heavy storm clouds, a bit of basil twirling between his fingers. His shirt-sleeves have been rolled back to his elbows and his hair is a bit longer now, it curls around his ears. 

“Sure does,” Crowley says without looking, because he cannot stop staring at that constellation of freckles on Aziraphale’s wrist, the way those platinum blond hairs catch and hold the light. They mimic the silvered leaves of the trees winking in the distance, blown open by a late spring storm. “All the days so far have been nice. We were due for some rain.”

Two weeks of sunshine on this particular island had felt rather like a century. 

“All the days so far _have_ been nice,” Aziraphale agrees, and Crowley does not miss that mischievous heat in his eyes. The way he looks up, looks down, lets his cheeks blossom pink. 

Crowley’s throat still sticks, his heart still pounds. 

Two-hundred and twenty-seven days since they had gotten smashingly drunk on expensive champagne at the Ritz and had embarrassed themselves completely, had given the wait staff a show they never would have forgotten were it not for some very demonic hand-waving the next morning. Two-hundred and twenty-seven days since they had stumbled upstairs to a hotel room they had not paid for and had fallen into bed together. Crowley had spent something like two hours between those angelic thighs he had been staring at for the last six thousand years and finally, for once, thanked God for not needing to breathe. 

Two-hundred and twenty-seven days since he had been quite professionally kissed by Aziraphale on that unexceptional bit of pavement outside the Ritz and he is still as incandescently besotted with this stuffy little angel as he had been slithering up that eastern wall in Eden.

Perhaps even more-so, he thinks, watching whatever mental gymnastics are currently taking place inside Aziraphale’s head judging by the lip-bite (he’s trying not to smile; he must be thinking of something embarrassing and ridiculous, like that time Crowley had gotten a leg cramp a few months ago halfway through a rather vigorous sexual session and had to take a break to see it gone), the heavily lidded eyes (he’s dreaming up some outlandish romantic scenario that Crowley will call ridiculous and ultimately ask for many times over, _later_ , after he has gotten over himself and admitted that yes, okay, _fine_ , rose petals in a bath for two are actually rather lovely), the blush that is swiftly spreading up into his ears (he’s brewing up something new and something that will probably have Crowley on his knees in about five minutes, a breathless pile of putty). 

“Feels a bit like our first date,” Aziraphale says shyly, and glances up at him through his eyelashes. 

Crowley squints a bit, recognizing the test. He threads his way through memories; the cafe in Paris after rescuing him from the Bastille, the inn in Edinburgh after a rather unfortunate witch hunt, the pub in Southwark, a stone’s throw from where they first saw Hamlet.

“Petronius’ place?” He guesses, and is rewarded with the sight of Aziraphale’s lip getting sucked into his mouth. 

There is a rather pleasant wind that blows between them, floral scented with electricity on its back, a storm whispering through it. The angel shakes his head. 

“Eden,” Aziraphale says. “That last day.”

Crowley leans himself onto the shovel sticking out of the earth, tries valiantly not to smile. 

“Was that a date?” Crowley asks, because Aziraphale _would_ take six-thousand years of tightly muffled longing as something approximating a courtship.

That lovely and persistently stubborn chin juts out a bit, as it is wont to do when he is feeling determined.

“It should have been,” Aziraphale sniffs. 

“You’re right,” Crowley admits, and it isn’t hard to do, not anymore. “It should have gone down _much_ differently.”

He watches Aziraphale tongue at his teeth, watches him shift around in his gardening clothes; the bow tie, the braces, the rolled up shirt. 

“What would you have done differently?” He asks, and Crowley doesn’t miss that percussive beat in his neck, at the hollow of his throat. 

The urge to smash their mouths together flares but he suppresses it. _Barely_.

And then he considers that such a magnificent question should not go unanswered. Because why just have a conversation about what he would have done differently? Why rein in that rather fantastic imagination he had been cursed with when the option to play out their first time— they _are_ in a garden, Crowley reminds himself— is presenting itself so lovingly? 

Like a ripe fruit, he thinks. It would be a sin not to pick it. 

He clears his throat and removes his glasses, hangs them delicately off the branch of a nearby fruit tree. He had not had such armor then and he should not have it now. _Apples_ , he thinks wryly, the arm of his glasses locking around a twig, and can’t help but smile. 

“Didn’t you have a flaming sword?”

He has a tremendous urge to wink at Aziraphale’s perplexed expression. 

The angel blinks, opens his mouth, closes it. 

“Beg pardon?”

“You _did_ ,” Crowley recalls, burying the flare of embarrassment at his ridiculous fantasy underneath the knowledge that it’s _Aziraphale_ he’s talking to. Aziraphale who would tell him with a devastating quirk of that pale eyebrow that he is being an idiot and then would kiss him rather soundly for the transgression. Aziraphale who routinely left tea cups on every flat surface of the house despite Crowley’s grousing and did not understand the concept of _moderation_. Aziraphale who had never denied Crowley anything, not in bed, not since Armageddon. 

He reaches down into that well of belonging he feels every morning waking up, watching Aziraphale pick up the underwear Crowley shucked off and onto the floor every night. He won’t be judged. Not for this. 

“It was flaming like anything.”

He watches Aziraphale’s eyebrows thread together, then come apart in slow understanding. The corner of Crowley’s mouth does not take directions. It quirks up despite his best efforts. 

“What happened to it?”

Aziraphale, ever the performer, smoothes his hands down his pale shirt as if desirous of the robes he wore in Eden. Or perhaps lamenting having to perform under such dreadful conditions. He clears his throat. 

“Gave it away,” he murmurs, and glances away.

It’s the same look, the same face, the same anxious expression. He could be wearing Crowley’s own skin and he’d still know that look, been that he’d studied and thought about it for enough eons. 

Crowley pushes up from the handle of the shovel, steps more neatly into Aziraphale’s orbit, understanding that his role in all of this had been, after all, that of the original tempter. And although he’d been too shy then he certainly was less shy now.

“You what?” He asks softly, and up this close can smell the perfume of their shared shampoo, the aftershave he had used just this morning, still sitting on their pedestal sink. 

“I gave it away,” Aziraphale breathes, a good deal less hysterically than the original time, and finally meets his eyes. 

They are blue outside, always, the blue of a cloudless sky, a perpetual summer. An atmosphere that exists in sharp contrast to the sudden scent of ozone, the bloated black clouds above.

Fat raindrops speckle the good soil under their feet, the fruit trees wink with the hoary leaves of their undersides. A droplet lands on Aziraphale’s temple and slides down his cheek and Crowley decides that this is the moment where things would have shifted back then, had he perhaps been a bit braver. 

He steps up close and lets his nose hover next to that damp temple, lets himself inhale that familiar angelic scent: soap, sunshine, _home_. 

“There are vicious animals,” Aziraphale says softly. They aren’t close enough to touch, not quite, and the space between them grows electric along with the storm. “And—” he gasps a bit as Crowley’s hand lifts and brushes, _barely_ , across his cheek, “—and she’s _expecting_.”

“Yeah,” Crowley breathes, and doesn’t miss the goosebumps that rise up off of Aziraphale’s exposed forearm, the sudden sucked inhale. “They got busy,” he murmurs, and presses his nose up into those ever-white curls at Aziraphale’s temple. “Perhaps we should too.” 

Aziraphale’s eyes close with a swift exhale. He shifts minutely into the electrified space between them, not touching, not quite.

“I hope I didn’t do the wrong thing,” he murmurs, and Crowley can hear through it that whispered note: _we could never be wrong_.

“Oh, you’re an angel,” Crowley breathes, and those butterflies that seem to live in perpetuity in his chest flutter a bit at the admission. Aziraphale is an angel, _his_ angel _—_ he reminds himself— an actual one. Beneath the soft clothes and the soft hair, the soft gazes and the soft skin lies an ethereal strength. A power that simmers quietly beneath the surface. It is a thrill that still churns in his stomach, a high he has not grown a tolerance to. “I don’t think you _can_ do the wrong thing.”

Those cheeks swell above the lift of a reluctant smile. Crowley watches the blood fill underneath the fine skin. 

“You’re tempting me, you old serpent,” he says, with an engineered degree of sharpness.

Crowley smiles into Aziraphale’s ear, butts his nose up against his cheekbone. 

“Is it working?”

There is a steady thrumming heat between them, electricity lining up in the negative space. The desire to press himself against Aziraphale from lips to hips to toes arcs through him— a desire that is strong always, yes, but at current seems ratcheted tight, a string ready to snap— or be plucked.

The wind blows between them again, fluffing Aziraphale’s hair up into storm clouds of their own. Crowley can feel rain beating on his shoulders, on his neck, running down beneath the collar of his shirt. There are moments on Aziraphale’s pale clothes where the rain wets through in transparent wonder and Crowley’s mouth grows wet, desirous suddenly of sucking the water out of the fibers, of feeling Aziraphale’s form beneath its soaked edge. 

“ _Yes_.”

There’s a peel of distant thunder that he can feel in his chest, reverberating in his throat, vibrating the earth. And then Aziraphale is pushing him backwards into the twisted spine of their old apple tree, turning into him, biting at his jaw, his chin, up into his lips. 

He tastes like the honey from breakfast, thick and sweet and Crowley isn’t sure how it ever came to be that _he_ is the original tempter when Aziraphale has always been far more delicious. 

“Angel,” he breathes out, and there are eager hands at the hem of his shirt, pulling it free of his trousers, desperate for touch. 

He notches himself into the pollarded joint of the tree and drags Aziraphale back with him, a thigh hitching up between his legs and pressing into the swiftly hardening line of his sex. 

He bites out a moan into Aziraphale’s lips, hands fisting in his hair. His mouth feels like a memory, a dream. One he’d had earlier this morning and also last night, twice the day prior. _Still his_. 

He pulls back just long enough to catch the sky lighting electric along the horizon, over the tree-line, Aziraphale kissing at his neck. Distracted by the spectacle— and the endlessly heady experience of kissing an actual angel— he does not register at first that Aziraphale has dipped out of view. Until he feels less-than-steady hands tugging at the button of his trousers, yanking roughly at a zipper. 

“Angel,” he breathes out in a huffed shock. “You’ll get your clothes muddy.”

There is a frustrated sort of tug on the underwear beneath his denim, searching for an opening. 

“Thus the appeal of gardening clothes,” Aziraphale says, as if he’d had impromptu garden blowjobs on his mind this morning when he picked out his trousers. 

Then again, Crowley thinks, watching with a sort of mute wonder at the calculated and appraising gaze the angel is currently giving his cock, he would not be entirely surprised if it had been. 

There is a kiss pressed daintily to his tip, a hand wrapped carefully around the base. Crowley threads his fingers into those fine pale curls and leans back into the cradle of the tree, his knees shaking, the joints turning to jelly.

The heat of Aziraphale’s mouth is a shock from the cool spring air, one Crowley swallows down with a bitten off whimper, head lolling back to stare up at their tree. 

There are dainty pink flowers there, he notices hazily, breathing through the wired-tight edge of orgasm lining up already— promises of future fruit. 

His hands reach down, cup around Aziraphale’s jaw, his neck, holding him steady as if it will somehow hold _himself_ steady, feeling for the swallows in a pale throat, the rhythmic movements of a practiced jaw. 

He glances down to see Aziraphale kneeling primly between his sprawled thighs, perfect posture, ankles crossed beneath him. He looks impossibly posh despite having most of a cock in his mouth, moving with a sort of adroit experience— a known formula for what Crowley likes best. 

Crowley squeezes his eyes closed and tries to breathe through it— the warm and altogether too frustratingly soft pleasure, the steadily growing storm, the understanding that Aziraphale is so good at this because he has done it no less than once every day for the last two-hundred and twenty-seven days. 

“A— Aziraphale,” he warns, pushing at those shoulders, chewing on his own lip. “Angel. _Angel_.”

That fair head pulls back, moves off of him completely. 

Crowley tugs at his arms, pulling him up, _up_ — losing his voice in a moan as the warm and wonderful heft of Aziraphale’s body slides against his overly sensitive sex. 

Aziraphale’s hand slides between them, picks up where his mouth left off. 

He can taste himself on Aziraphale’s lips and he endeavors to remove it, whimpering into the kiss at the steady easing of his hand. 

He pulls back, closes his eyes, presses their foreheads together. 

“I thought,” he murmurs shakily against Aziraphale’s skin, damp with rain and kisses, “that _I_ was meant to be tempting _you_.” 

The sky opens above them, cracks apart with thunder he can feel in his teeth. 

“Yes,” Aziraphale agrees, and Crowley regrets it immediately as that hand pulls back, the pleasure stops. “Quite right.” Both hands work to tuck him back into his clothing. “Thank you for the reminder.” 

“Wait— no. _Fuck_.”

“Evil always—“

“—do _not_ say ‘sow the seeds of its own destruction’ at me,” Crowley interrupts, grasping useless fingers into those pale forearms, desperate to have them around him again. “In our _garden_ no less.”

Aziraphale stands and steps back and looks askance at the rows of neatly cultivated vegetables. Giant cabbages, Swiss chard the color of oxblood, radishes peeking their pink shoulders above the soil. 

“I don’t think the lettuce will mind, dear.”

Crowley reaches out and tucks an errant curl back behind Aziraphale’s ear, trying to catch his breath— is thrilled when that downy head leans into the touch. 

“This garden is _half_ demonic,” Crowley says breathlessly, shifting his hips and leaning into the knotted points where the apple tree had been roughly pruned, decades ago. “I will not allow you to disparage our children.” 

“I heard you yelling at the turnips last night,” Aziraphale murmurs, and rubs his face into Crowley’s cupping hand. 

“It looked like they were thinking about bolting,” Crowley offers. 

“And besides,” Aziraphale says, ignoring his explanation and stepping up close again, a thigh reminding him of where his mouth had just been. “You waited six thousand years. Perhaps you can wait a bit longer.” 

Crowley shudders against the tree, shifts his hips against that thigh.

“I thought the point of this fantasy was that I _didn’t_ have to wait.”

Aziraphale stifles a laugh with a kiss pressed into his cheek, then again in the corner of his mouth. Crowley can feel his long white eyelashes brushing against his skin. 

There are the increasingly large and furious drops of rain falling around them, the cloudburst intensifying. Flower petals ride the air currents. The lettuce waves in gratitude. 

“I believe this is the part where I protect you from the rain,” Aziraphale murmurs into his ear.

“Gonna bring the wings out for this one?” Crowley nuzzles into it, rubbing their damp cheeks together. Aziraphale lets out increasingly frenetic breaths between them, shivering in the early spring rain. 

“Not necessary, my dear. We have something much better.”

Before Crowley can ask _what_ , exactly, could be better than taking shelter beneath his beloved’s wing, he finds an arm knocking into the back of his knees, a hand catching his back as he nearly falls. And then he is hefted into surprisingly strong arms, tucked up close into Aziraphale’s chest. 

“This is undignified,” he snaps, not even remotely serious. 

“You wretched thing,” Aziraphale says, and jostles him in his arms as if he weighs nothing. “How ever will you survive?” 

“I have a reputation to uphold,” Crowley says, and can feel the strong and alluring thump of Aziraphale’s heartbeat against his own ribs. “I’m the _third_ character in the Book of Genesis, you know. It’s a best-seller.”

Aziraphale leans down and bumps him with his nose, softly. 

“And here you are,” Aziraphale says, and the rain soaks through their clothes, mats their hair against their skin, “getting carried away by the fourth.”

The backdoor swings open with either a nudge from an angelic foot or a nudge from an angelic miracle. And inside along the tiny kitchen there remains the evidence of their breakfast; crepes dusted with sugar and lemon juice, golden syrup dripping off the plate. Their discarded teacups kiss next to the sink. The jar of honey has left dreamy sugared circles all along the kitchen table. A multitude of perfect infinities. 

Crowley closes his eyes and inhales and can smell the memory of their breakfast, of every breakfast since they had moved here. All those pancakes, all those waffles. Hugs that had turned into slow-dance swaying barefoot at nearly noon, plates stacked high in the sink. Kisses while cooking that had tasted like syrup and strawberries. Sex at near dawn, next to the basket of eggs and the pots of flour, performed upright and against the counter. 

That wild thread of disbelief unfurls itself in his chest and he takes hold of it, tries to tell himself that it’s real, all of it. There will be no boiling sea, no cracked earth, no poison rain. Aziraphale is still here, _still his_. There is only perfect contentment, belonging, _safety_. 

“See?” Aziraphale says, as he carries him inside, under the sheltering roof of their home. “ _Much_ better than just a wing.”

“I _just_ ,” Crowley exhales, emotion catching in his throat and trying to bury it, “cleaned the floors.”

Aziraphale glances back over his shoulder at the wet footprints he has left behind, shifts Crowley in his arms. 

“I’ll get on my hands and knees and clean it,” he says, with far too much of a glint in his eye. “Tomorrow. You can watch me.”

“You _know_ the floor will end up in a far worse shape if you do that.”

Aziraphale carries him into the hallway just outside their bedroom, that tiny darkened space, all warm honeyed wood and smoothed timbers, barely a body’s width wide. It smells increasingly like creosote the closer they get to summer, the wood giving up its history, exorcised by the heat. 

“I’m not the one,” Aziraphale starts, letting Crowley’s legs slip out of his arms and pressing him firmly against the wall, “who has a problem with that.” And then he captures his lips in a gentle kiss, breathing out small hums of quiet contentment. 

“You bastard,” Crowley gasps out against him when he finally pulls back, tongue darting out to capture the water droplets along Aziraphale’s cheek. 

“You sweet thing,” Aziraphale murmurs back, teasing. 

“I am _not—_ ”

Aziraphale closes off his mouth before he can protest again, that thigh reappearing between Crowley’s.

He follows Aziraphale’s mouth as it pulls back, kisses after him desperately, hungry for a multitude of contact. His hands come up and tug at any available bit of clothing, his braces, his buttons. Frustration slides into his veins at the layers of fabric, suddenly so reminiscent of the many hours of time that had transpired between them, no touch. He still has in his head an imagined typography of Aziraphale naked, a dream-form he continually erases and replaces with the genuine thing, the preferred reality. He had invented the image to placate himself from the resolute and incurable desire that stokes itself still through his veins. A storm that has been ravaging him since the beginning.

“Better than a wing, yes?” Aziraphale murmurs, and Crowley is close enough to feel the puffs of his warm breath.

Lightning illuminates their darkened hallway for a breathless moment, just enough to throw the velvet wet skin of Aziraphale’s profile into sharp relief. 

Crowley swipes a thumb along the damp edge of the angel’s cheek, reminded abruptly of how he had looked standing on that great eastern wall, outlined in storm. How he had stood in the rain and had sheltered Crowley, an enemy he hardly knew, with no thought of himself.

“It is an exceptional wing,” Crowley says, not agreeing, not disagreeing. Because their home here is perfect, yes, but so is Aziraphale. He always has been.

Crowley leans in close and kisses hard against the smile on Aziraphale’s face, desirous suddenly of the angel spread nude across the bed, a simulacrum to soothe over the unearthed fantasy he had harbored since the beginning: Aziraphale in Eden underneath that apple tree, _their_ apple tree, right underneath the nose of God and anyone else who wanted to judge them, open, safe, _still his_. 

“You— _mmph—_ wore a lot less clothes back then though,” Crowley manages in ever more frantic tones, tugging in annoyance at the bow tie he has become frighteningly adept at removing. 

Aziraphale gasps out a laugh against Crowley’s mouth and then sucks a kiss into the corner.

“We should’ve taken advantage of that,” he murmurs.

“ _Christ_ , all those toga eras we missed out on. _Loincloths_ even.”

“Probably for the best,” Aziraphale says in between kisses pressed to any available skin on his cheek, jaw, neck before they disappear, Crowley sliding his back down the wall to kneel in front of him. “I used to be quite fond of those animal fat perfumes humanity invented.” He huffs in an inhale as Crowley unbuttons his shirt with the kind of practiced expediency only hundreds of hours of experience could replicate. “Which were,” he gasps out, “in retrospect rather rank.”

Crowley pauses and hunches over his hands on the last button, laughing delightedly just north of Aziraphale’s navel. 

“I would like to state for the record,” Crowley starts, and presses a kiss into the soft belly, “that I did not say that.”

He is rewarded with a swift and teasing tug on his hair.

“And I’d also like to point out,” he says, pulling Aziraphale’s shirt tails out of his trousers and running grateful fingers up his belly, that skin like fresh milk, “that I would’ve licked those perfumes off of you and thanked you for the opportunity to do so.” 

He hears Aziraphale’s head tilt back and thunk into the wall. 

“You know darling you really are quite—”

Aziraphale bites off the end of his statement with a shocked and broken moan, Crowley’s lips having migrated lower to mouth open the hard line of cock in his trousers. 

“Whatever you’re about to say,” he murmurs, teasing his teeth along that clothed length, “ _don’t_.”

“Of course,” Aziraphale sighs, hands cradling through Crowley’s hair and tugging. “Wouldn’t dream of it. _Very_ demonic you are.”

“ _Angel_ ,” he tries to growl but it doesn’t quite work, not with Aziraphale’s hands moving down to his ears, the back of his neck. 

“Oh yes, darling. Of course. Big bad demon. Very spooky.” 

He scrambles for the button, then the fly, yanking the trousers down, off, _off_ — desperate to get to Aziraphale’s skin, to have him in his mouth. 

It’s a dance they’ve gotten better at, gotten used to. The practiced ease of slipping socks over heels in the fluid motion of removing trousers, braces clanking loudly against the wooden floor. 

He holds Aziraphale’s calves as he steps out of his clothes, brings them up to kiss softly at his ankles. And then he licks a line up the downy milk-white of Aziraphale’s damp thigh, sticks his nose into the crease of his hip. _Still his_. 

“ _Darling_ ,” Aziraphale sighs above him and Crowley can smell again the honey from breakfast, the basil he had plucked and eaten in the garden, green and bright. 

He smashes his face into that soft hip, buries a grateful nose into the blond hair. The emotion crests in his throat again, something like gratitude, like _grace_ , and he swallows it down as his hands spread open-fingered up his thighs.

“ _Yes_ , Crowley, _dearest_.”

He knows by now that a desirous Aziraphale breathes his syllables instead of speaking them. That he flexes his fingers in the same way he does before eating exceptionally good food. That he moans freely in an appreciation that unlocks a binary acceptance in Crowley’s own throat. He’s safe here. No judgement. Not ever. _Still his._

“Can I?” He asks, because he always asks, even after all this time.

“ _Yes_ ,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley looks up to find those sea glass eyes staring down at him wetly in the dark.

And it hits him all at once that they are together, alone, in this cottage barely big enough for two but all he could ever ask for. That he is kneeling on the worn wooden floor that has held so many memories of so many humans before them— finally in a place that out-aged immortals with the depth of its domestic history. That he has Aziraphale naked against a wall and his heart still pounds too loudly but it’s not in fear and it’s not in pain. It’s just the two of them, like it had been in the beginning— just to the east of that garden with their apple tree— all over again. 

“Marry me.”

He isn’t even sure he’s said it. There is a moment of not-quite panic as it occurs to him that the thought he has held inside all morning— all of their beautiful, resplendent mornings— comes spilling out in not a thought but in his actual _voice_. He’s said it. Finally. 

Aziraphale is looking down at him in wonder, as if seeing him for the first time, and then a smile cracks on his face like dawn, like the sun lifting on the horizon. 

“Yes.”

The tilt of gravity seems to shift and he finds himself breathless and laughing, pressing his face up into Aziraphale’s belly and breathing in the scent of him; rain, sweet earth, honey, _his_. 

“I did not realize that is why you were getting on your knees, dearest,” Aziraphale says, cupping his cheeks, his jaw. “I would have insisted I keep my trousers on.” 

Crowley does not bother to bite back his smile, pressing furious kisses instead into every inch of Aziraphale’s skin he can find, charting a new map to erase the placeholder one in his mind. 

He murmurs something he hopes Aziraphale can understand, over and over again into that damp skin.

“And I you,” Aziraphale breathes, tugging on his arms and lifting him back up, against the protest of Crowley’s knees. “Always have.” 

He can’t speak, it’s too much. There are what feels like the rays of a thousand tiny suns lined up in the spaces between skin and skeleton, lighting him from within. He feels warm despite the chill, can see even now the steam coming off of their damp bodies in the dark hallway, lit only by the intermittent flashing of a storm moving swiftly by. 

“Off,” Aziraphale commands, tugging at his shirt, hands moving already at the button of his trousers. “I want to see my husband.”

Crowley stalls, freezes, captures Aziraphale’s frenetic hands. 

_Husband_. 

And he doesn’t have time to overthink it because there are angelic lips against his own, kissing him back into the plaster. 

_Husband, husband_. _Still his_. 

“Not yet,” Crowley manages, his throat being remarkably uncooperative. “Fiancé.”

“I won’t tell if you won’t,” Aziraphale says, and bites into his jaw, fingers sliding beneath his shirt. 

“Wanna— do it _right_ ,” he says, in between a shirt lifting over his head, in between fingers unzipping his fly. “A ring, a— a _ceremony_.” He squeezes out the words as Aziraphale’s hands dip into his trousers, pull his cock free, push the fabric down. The angel has seemingly less qualms about completely undressing his fiancé— _husband_ — than Crowley does. The socks, apparently, are staying on. 

“How traditional for a demon who wears sunglasses,” Aziraphale murmurs, hand tightening, stroking up. “I don’t need any of that. Just you.”

“You— should have it though.” He lets Aziraphale spin him to face the wall, can feel it as the angel goes to his knees. He can’t spread his legs very far, not with the trousers still locked around his ankles, and he submits to curious hands running flat palmed up his thighs. “You _deserve_ it.”

“I’d rather have you,” Aziraphale says into his thigh, nose nudging into his skin. “Right now, in fact. If you’re agreeable.” 

“Yeah,” he breathes out, unsteady, and presses his forehead against the wall. “Definitely.”

He can blindly feel Aziraphale’s hands cupping him, pulling him open, apart— the press of Aziraphale’s cheeks against him, and then the hot slide of tongue over his skin. 

“ _Fuck_.”

He can feel the rough plaster of the wall against his cheekbone as he flattens against it, can feel his heartbeat pounding up high in his throat. It’s a delicate pleasure, a simple one— wet and soft and gentle. Aziraphale licking tiny circles into him.

“Christ, _angel_.”

There’s a moan behind him, a pleased contented sound. And then that clever tongue pushes into him, pulls out.

“I’m— _Aziraphale_.”

There is merely a dainty hum in response, the hands holding him open pull him ever so gently more apart. 

His cock jumps at each insertion, each slow circle. He glances down between his legs and can see the drips of his own pre-ejaculate shining on the floor. 

“And you,” Aziraphale murmurs, pulling back to press gentle kisses into the back of Crowley’s thigh, “were cross with _me_ about the floor.”

Crowley takes great gulping breaths against the wall, sagging into it for support.

“I’ll clean it up,” he echoes. “On my hands and knees.”

He can feel Aziraphale smiling against his hip, a hand rising up to rub lazy circles against his entrance, to play lovingly with his balls. 

“You can watch me,” he gasps out as they cup him there and tug. “Tomorrow.”

“Wonderful,” Aziraphale says, nuzzling his nose against him. “We can take turns on all fours.”

Crowley huffs out a laugh and presses his forehead back into the wall, hands flat palmed and braced there. 

“You’re gonna kill me,” he mumbles, and is rewarded with a bruising kiss sucked into his skin. “Leaving marks on me, are you?” 

“You _are_ my hus—

“— _Fiancé—”_

“—band now,” Aziraphale says primly, ignoring Crowley’s interruption. And that finger between his legs is suddenly miraculously slick. “I am merely marking what’s mine.” 

Crowley cants his hips down against the hand rubbing into him, breathing out sharply against the wall. _Still his_. 

“Always been yours though,” he manages, and squeezes his eyes closed as a single finger sinks into him, pulls out.

“Making up for lost time then,” Aziraphale says softly, with the weight of six thousand years behind it. “We should’ve done this _much_ sooner.”

“It’s a good—” he gasps as Aziraphale pulls his finger out, sucks another marking kiss into the the back of his thigh, “— _thing_ we didn’t _ahh_ —”

“And why is that, darling?” Aziraphale asks dreamily, as if he isn’t up to his third knuckle, stringing Crowley along.

“Because I really would’ve— oh _fuck—_ ”

He presses his forehead into the wall as Aziraphale manages to find that very lovely stretch of nerves in his mostly human corporation and can feel the joints in his legs turning swiftly into mush. 

Aziraphale stops moving just long enough for Crowley to catch his breath, then lose it again. 

“What was that, my dear?”

Crowley can feel his breath bouncing back at him off of the wall, the incredible shaking of his left leg. He clears his throat, tries to breathe.

“—damaged my reputation,” he manages. 

“Oh none of that,” Aziraphale soothes, pressing all the way in again and holding there. Crowley makes a muffled sound into the wall, rocking up on his toes, back down, trying to squeeze movement out of the frustratingly small insertion. “You’ve always impressed me.” 

“Please,” Crowley pants out, vibrating against the wall, shifting back, forward, seeking friction. “ _Please_.”

“What do you say,” Aziraphale starts, pulling his hand free, “that we move this about four meters in the left?”

Crowley rolls his head over to stare down the tiny hallway, to the bedroom door waiting for them open and inviting. 

He gets half a nod and a choked off _yes_ before he is hefted again, smashed in between strong arms and a strong chest, carted off down the hallway. He kicks his trousers and socks off and does not miss the begrudgingly fond expression on Aziraphale’s face as he does it. 

“I suppose I’ll pick those up along with your underpants from last night,” he says, and deposits Crowley on the bed. 

The bedroom is a tiny thing, nearly all bed from wall-to-wall and filled currently with the kind of dreamy vermillion light that could only come after a brief and turbulent mid-day storm.

Aziraphale kneels next to him and Crowley takes the moment to roll them both over, pinning the angel beneath him.

“I’ll get it later,” Crowley promises, kissing into his collarbones, that persistent beat in the hollow of his throat, “along with all your teacups.”

Aziraphale breathes out a laugh and submits to the assault, fingers curling in Crowley’s hair. 

“You know,” Crowley says, in between a trail of kisses leading increasingly lower, “I found one,” he nuzzles his nose into the soft hair of Aziraphale’s belly, “in my _monstera_?”

Aziraphale wiggles back and forth on the bedsheets.

“Did I? I must’ve forgotten it when I was praising them.”

Crowley pushes those angelic white thighs back, bites a kiss into the back of Aziraphale’s leg in warning. 

“You’re too soft on them,” he murmurs, and then licks a line from base to tip, sucking him into his mouth. 

There’s that familiar cry, a lilting, angelic sound that Crowley does not think he will ever get over hearing. It flows down his neck. It pumps through his veins. 

“ _Darling_ ,” Aziraphale breathes out. “Yes. _So good_.”

And Crowley still is so unused to hearing _yes_ , to hearing _please_ and _good_ and _love_. Those are soft words unbefitting a demon; sounds that remind him of the dreamlike quality of all of this— their life here, the easy perfection of it. 

He slides his mouth off his cock— cataloguing the sounds Aziraphale makes as he does it— licks lovingly at the pink balls, the white inner thighs. There’s a high-pitched exhale when he finds his entrance, a certain desperate pulling at the sheets beneath them, bunching in his fists. 

Two-hundred and twenty-seven days later and doing this still reminds him of that first evening at the Ritz. Two-hundred and twenty-seven days later and he still hasn’t gotten his fill. 

He flexes his hips down into the mattress, feeling strung apart, on edge for seems like hours. There is a raw gnawing ache in his belly, a certain shivering apart of his resolve. He presses his tongue into Aziraphale to distract himself, spreads him open, pressing those lovely white thighs apart with his hands. 

His skin is slick— everywhere— damp with rain and he still smells like his garden, even here, green and fresh and sweet and clean. 

“Oh. _Crowley_. Yes. So good.”

He licks into him, gentles him apart, takes his time. He catalogues away the flexing muscles, the delicate relaxation, the increasingly brute shift of hips down into his tongue. 

He pulls back, presses a kiss into him. 

“Fiancé,” he whispers in stunned disbelief, and rests his forehead against a thigh. 

“ _Husband_ ,” Aziraphale corrects, fingers threading through his hair. 

He slides his mouth back, a finger drawing up next to it in subtle inquest, rubbing into him. 

Aziraphale begins doing that pleasant rolling of his hips, back arching and Crowley recognizes by now what that means— pulling back to fumble into his bedside table, hunting for lubricant. 

“Yes, _yes_.” Aziraphale is nodding hazily, a hand palming at his cock. “Need you.”

A thrill lines up down his spine and spikes through it. 

Aziraphale needs him. _Needs_ him. Not just want and not just desire. His hands are inelegant on the bottle, shaking, and he reminds himself it’s been two-hundred and twenty-seven days. It’s not a dream. It’s all real. _Still his._

He settles himself between Aziraphale’s thighs and squeezes out liquid into his palm, heating it with his breath. Aziraphale shifts on the bed in anticipation, eyes heavily lidded and breathing out something that sounds like Crowley’s name, over and over again.

“ _Yes_.”

He presses a finger into him— just one— and Crowley has the delighted demonic thrill of doing to the angel what Aziraphale had done to _him_ , earlier, in the hallway. 

He pushes in, pulls out, breathes through the spectacular realization that Aziraphale is still fantastically stretched and slick inside from earlier— last night, or perhaps it had been early this morning. 

“Good?” He murmurs, and gets to watch as that fair head tilts back, as a moan crests out of Aziraphale’s throat. 

“You’re— _teasing me_ you— you old serpent.”

“Just wanna make that fourth character feel good,” Crowley says, and his voice is low in his throat, thick, the words feeling like honey.

“I’d—” Aziraphale’s voice catches in his throat, “—feel better with y— you inside me.”

Crowley closes his eyes as he says it— two-hundred and twenty-seven days and such an offer still slides over him like he’s being immersed in water, pulls him under. Aziraphale still wants him, _wants him_ — all this time later, _still his_.

He pulls his hand away and kneels up on the bed, between those lovely pale thighs, slicks himself wet. 

It still feels like a dream, all of it— Aziraphale squirming back and forth on the bed, waiting for him, the hazy pink light leftover from the storm, the teacup on the bedside table. He knows that he can go into their closet and find Aziraphale’s clothing kissing into his, the black and blue, can lean over and breathe in the smell of the angel on his jacket these days, any time. 

He eases himself inside and it feels like coming home— warmth and safety— Aziraphale’s thighs falling open at first and then coming up to latch around him, pull him in, ankles crossing behind his back. 

Crowley leans over him on his forearms, rests down across that strong chest, those strong hips. He can frame Aziraphale’s face in his hands like this, can kiss his cheeks, his lips, his forehead, his nose. And he does even as he struggles to catch his breath, holding himself steady, letting Aziraphale open around him, take him in. 

“So good,” he breathes out, and his arms are shaking already, he can feel sweat breaking out down the long line of his spine. There is a familiarity to the slot of their hips, a practiced ease to the rhythm of their bodies. He shifts his hips in tiny grinding circles— aware that Aziraphale likes it deep and slow and bordering on torturous— a fitting speed for an angel who is so very good at savoring things. 

“Oh. Crowley. _Fuck_.”

There is a thrill that laces through him at that knowledge and its use put into practice— that he knows by now the quickest way to get the angel off.

And what a gift, Crowley thinks, watching Aziraphale’s eyes close and his body tremble, that he has this knowledge at all. 

“Love you,” he murmurs, trying to ignore the incessant desire to go fast, always— pushing it down and reminding himself that he’s close enough already, going slow. 

Aziraphale is damp and smooth and soft, a series of wiggling motions and eager limbs, grasping for any exposed skin he can find. He is disarmingly hot, _always_ , drawing up a pleasure in spite of so little movement. 

Crowley presses their foreheads together, shuddering and panting and he can feel Aziraphale rutting up into the slick press of their bellies, the motion pushing Crowley out, pulling him back in. 

“Angel— _angel_.”

He can’t stop kissing him— mouth open and damp against his temple, his jaw, his lips— drawing out and then snapping his hips up experimentally, cracking out a moan into Aziraphale’s skin at the slickness, the unresisting pleasure. 

There’s an arch of angelic back in response and the angle changes just enough— Crowley rearing back to stare down at the desperate ecstasy on Aziraphale’s face, the sudden gasping cry. He flexes up, again, again— pressing, relaxing, chasing Aziraphale’s moans.

“Oh, _oh_.”

“Yeah,” he breathes shakily, and watches in thrilled delight as Aziraphale’s eyes flutter to stay open, then finally close. “That’s it, love.”

Aziraphale attempts to make words, form sounds— the capacity for language a swiftly fleeting thing. 

“Yes, _d—darling_.”

He reaches up and grasps desperate hands around Crowley’s back, their skin sliding between layers of rain and sweat, pulling him up close. He can feel Aziraphale’s cock slick and rubbing between them and he can’t fit a hand between them, not this close, so he buries an arm beneath the small of Aziraphale’s back and lifts him into it, pressing their bellies more tightly together. 

“Oh, _Crowley_ . S—so good, _so good_. _”_

“ _Angel_ — oh fuck I’m—I’m—”

He chokes back a gasp and closes his eyes, shaking and sweating in the confines of Aziraphale’s grip, in the hold of such frighteningly tight pleasure. 

“With me,” Aziraphale gasps out wetly against his neck. “ _With me_.”

“Yes, _angel_ , fuck. _Fuck_.”

Aziraphale writhes under him hopelessly, squeezing their bodies together tight.

“Now, _Crowley,_ ” he gasps out. _“_ Now, _now, now, now—_ ”

Aziraphale tightens underneath him, around him, crying out and squeezing and there is finally a spill of sublime heat between them, a release that pulls Crowley along helplessly after-- pressing his hips in with bruising intensity and then pausing, suspended, _divine_. Reality fragments, splits apart, comes back together.

Aziraphale is breathing shakily into his shoulder, he can feel the angel’s curls plastered against his neck. 

“You okay?” He breathes, pulling back just enough to feel the soaked skin of their bellies shuddering against each other. 

“Never better,” Aziraphale says dreamily, reaching up to rub fondly at Crowley’s hair. “ _Husband_.”

He buries his face back into the slicked junction of neck and shoulder, kissing at the skin there. 

“ _Fiancé_ ,” he mutters. 

Aziraphale just hums and strokes loving fingers down his spine, presses a nose into Crowley’s ear. 

“M’sorry,” he mumbles, “for springing it on you like that.”

“I’m not,” Aziraphale says. “I had half a mind of asking you the same question.”

Crowley pulls back sharply. 

“You _what_?”

Aziraphale hums softly in response and smoothes Crowley’s hair back. 

“I wasn’t entirely certain how you felt about such human rituals though.”

Crowley opens his mouth, closes it. 

“Should’ve known,” he murmurs, and brushes a thumb along Crowley’s eyebrow, down to smooth along his cheek, “considering what a hopeless romantic you are.” 

“I’m _not_ ,” Crowley bites, but it has no teeth in it.

“Shall we perhaps take a bath together?” Aziraphale suggests, something wry hidden in the corner of his mouth. 

Crowley spares a glance down between their bodies.

“Definitely.”

And it won’t be until later, as Crowley is sprinkling rose petals in their bathwater without prompting that he will realize what Aziraphale has done. He will exact his revenge through a devastating and thoroughly demonic assault of kisses pressed into those thumb-shaped imprints on Aziraphale’s back as they clean the kitchen, mop up the floors. 

He will not notice immediately that his anxieties have fallen away, that he no longer thinks about the boiling sea, the cracked earth, the poison rain. He will no longer wake up covered in sweat, worried that Aziraphale is gone. The fear quietly sinking back into the plaster walls of their home, a ghost that has finally been exorcised.

And he will fall asleep that evening curled into the nook of Aziraphale’s shoulder and will wake up the next morning to the smell of Aziraphale’s increasingly terrible coffee, feeling profoundly grateful for the opportunity to drink it. 

That fourth character in the Book of Genesis will eventually submit to a ceremony, and a license that will be hung framed upon their wall. Something that the third character in that best seller can look at, and point to, and remind himself that they made it, they’re safe, in love-- and that Aziraphale, after all this time, is _still his._

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me always on [Tumblr](http://racketghost.tumblr.com/) where I will continue to yell about the world's most romantic duo until I'm no longer a human being.
> 
> thank you for reading, and for any kind comments, and for also yelling with me about these two love birds.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Milk & Honey](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27574343) by [Djapchan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Djapchan/pseuds/Djapchan)




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